[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                  RTC OVERSIGHT HEARINGS MUST BE HELD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized for 
3\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I have been here in the House now for about a 
year and a quarter, and I thought that I began to understand things and 
how things work. Occasionally then something will come about and 
happen, and I am just nonplused. Today was one of those days.
  In 1989, Congress passed the Resolution Trust Corporation Act. Among 
other things, what that did was establish a statutory obligation to 
hold semiannual oversight hearings to oversee and to manage and look 
into what the RTC, the Resolution Trust Corporation, was doing with 
respect to the failed savings and loans.
  Those oversight hearings are supposed to be held in the House 
Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs every 6 months, 
semiannually. The last one was supposed to have occurred in December. 
In fact, it was scheduled for December 3 and postponed until March 24, 
which is just a couple of days from now.
  I look in the paper this morning and read the Washington Post, only 
to find out that in fact the chairman of the House Committee on 
Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs has indefinitely postponed those 
hearings. One can only ask why.
  Well, it is obvious, I suppose, why. But what is not obvious and what 
ought to be stated is that the law does not state that those hearings 
only can be held if there will not be any embarrassing witnesses that 
might bring up facts which are embarrassing either to the chairman or 
to the administration. It does not say that they are only going to be 
held in the absence of a scandal or potential scandal. It does not say 
that those hearings are held only when everything is going along 
swimmingly. In fact, is not the whole purpose of having oversight 
hearings with respect to the RTC to ferret out and find out if there 
have been improprieties, if in fact the taxpayers' dollars have not 
been used in the way they are supposed to be used?
  Apparently, from what I understand, there are some people from Kansas 
City, from the office of the Resolution Trust Corporation in Kansas 
City, who want to testify to exactly that. Now they are not going to be 
allowed to do that.
  It really brings into question the whole issue of allegiance to 
politics or allegiance to principles. It makes you wonder where is the 
allegiance in this House? Is it to politics? Is it to the Democratic 
Party, or the Republican Party? Is it to the President? Is it to the 
leadership? Or is it to principles, that is, the Constitution, the laws 
that we pass, the laws that this Congress itself has passed.
  We cannot simply obey the law only when it is convenient. It seems to 
me that there should be no wonder that in terms of public confidence, 
the public ranks Congressmen 24th out of 25. We are just ahead of used 
care salesmen when it comes to public trust and confidence. It surely 
ought to be obvious why the public overwhelmingly supports term limits.
  I urge the chairman of the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban 
Affairs to immediately schedule the hearings that he has a statutory 
obligation to schedule, and to immediately carry on with that oversight 
responsibility that was given to the Committee on Banking, Finance and 
Urban Affairs, so that we can restore some modicum of public trust in 
this institution, that we might do the things that we are charged 
constitutionally and by dint of law, passed by this Congress, to do.

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